Designing forecasting into reservoir operations: An application of institutional analysis to identify barriers and opportunities for resilient decision systems

Abstract:

Incorporating forecasting information into reservoir operational systems requires taking into account existing complex rule structures that includes State and Federal environmental laws, water rights allocations to agriculture, energy, industrial and municipal uses, flood curves and downstream impacts, penalties for being out-of-compliance, and local heuristics used in daily decision making. This paper applies a theoretical framework known as institutional analysis from social and economic sciences to the case of reservoir operations at the Lake Shasta Dam as a diagnostic tool for determining barriers to change. It focuses on challenges to incorporating climate forecasting models as part of the Sacramento River Temperature Task Group and the Shasta Temperature Management Plan. Temperature Management Plans represent a rare example of directly incorporating climate forecasts into large scale water management, in this case toward the conservation of the Sacramento River winter-run Chinook. Using a mix of document analysis, operational guidelines, and observational data, the paper demonstrates the utility of the framework in illustrating barriers and opportunities to aligning forecasts within institutional rule structures. The paper concludes with lessons how to better incorporate forecasting information into reservoir operations in a manner that accounts for the complex, and often contradictory rules systems, driving management operations.